Communists put brakes on industry after vote

India's communists will limit land acquisition for industry in their heartland state after voters anger.

India’s communists will limit land acquisition for industry in their heartland state after voters anger over seizures of fertile farmland rebuffed them in a general election this month.

The communists lost Parliamentary seats in West Bengal,which they have ruled since 1977,highlighting a broader stand-off between industry and farmers unwilling to give up land in a country where two-thirds of the population lives on agriculture.

The move to restrict land acquisition underscores how parties are under pressure in India to appease farmers,whose support for the ruling Congress party and its allies was key to the coalition’s victory.

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“Industry would be set up only in barren land or at best in single crop land in agriculturally backward districts,” Land Reforms Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said.

Violent protests by farmers unhappy over the land compensation paid to them forced India’s Tata Motors to abandon plans to set up a factory in Singur in West Bengal to produce the world’s cheapest car.

The company will now make the Nano in western Gujarat state,one of the country’s most industrialised states with which West Bengal’s Government were trying to narrow the gap.

A $3 billion project to set up a chemical hub in Nandigram,a cluster of villages in a southern district in West Bengal,was also called off after running battles between farmers,police,and communist activists. At least 35 villagers were killed.

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Mollah said any future land acquisition would be done with consent of the villagers.